Those who know my heart... know it.

I have to come clean on something.  As I blog and show photos of this and that in my house or other things, and sometimes dip into the serious waters of my heart, I have been struggling behind the scenes with something. The fear that our long-ago pursued dream to downsize our mortgage and live our life in a way that blesses others whether it be financially, opening our home with hospitality, mentoring, or otherwise... has come to a complete and total stand-still.  I remember the feelings I had when I wrote this post- the one about how we did all those fun updates and things to our kitchen- things I had literally imagined doing for nearly a decade- but the bottom line at the end of the day, was that it's just a house.  At the time I blogged that I really hoped if God asked me to leave it all behind and take a leap of faith, I would step out that front door in a heartbeat. 

Friends, if you could only know the journey Adrain and I have been on since that moment.

It felt like life slammed us in the stomach with a story so far off the beaten path we had previously been walking on, that we couldn't really talk about it in detail to anyone.  We kind of still shake our head sometimes and think, "What is this all about?" Occasionally I blog about the pieces I can share but it's hard not to be able to just vomit it all out there so you guys can actually get the whole picture. Those who know me well, know the general junk that we feel comfortable sharing out loud.  One or two people have probed and pursued me, and have let me go deep.  

And loved me anyway. 

It all began here.  Along the way it's been exciting, eye-opening, cloudy, confusing, backward and at a dead stop.  We're currently in the dead stop.  That sounds so dramatic, but in this economy we are pretty much frozen right here in this place, unless God opens a door to something different. I know I'm not the only one out there that feels this way. 

God has certainly been silent in our story for what seems to Adrain and I like a long time.  It's always longer when you're the one living it, isn't it?  I always laugh when I realize someone "I just heard was pregnant" delivered her baby a month ago.  I think, "What?  Nine whole months have passed?"  (And of course to her, it's small lifetime.) 

I have been so encouraged because of something I just heard this week. "When you are going through something hard in your life and wonder where God is, remember, that the teacher is always silent during the test."

No pretty bow at the end of this post... just something to chew on. 

Food. And stuff.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love feeding people?  Cause yeah.  I do.

I have to share one of my favorite bar cookie recipes of all time.  Super simple. 

But before I do, I have two things to say today. 

1) I miss doing my 365 posts, because that gave me an excuse to take random photos of anything I wanted that had nothing to do with anything and put them somewhere.  I have a few of those in this post.  Just in case you were thinking, "Huh?" as you looked at them.  Not that I've ever done that before.  Like ever.  Ha!

2) I've gotten a ton of emailed questions about some of my blog tweaks.  And I'm almost jumping up and down that y'all like them!  I still need to install a social media button put on the side, but then I'm done.  (I put all the places you can find me in a tab at the top for now.) I thought I'd just answer the main questions here since I've gotten so many duplicate questions. You have asked me the style of font in my texts- I'm using "Arimo" for the main text and "Oswald" for my post titles.  I've had a bunch of you ask about the sizes I'm using my photos at.  I re-size them in PicMonkey to "850" wide.  With my extended margins that is the perfect size for this particular blog width and I can click "Original size" when I'm uploading photos and plunking them into my blog.  (You would obviously want to re-size your photos for your own margins.)

 (Mother's Day bouquet)

Okay so these bars.  I've been making them for years.  I got the recipe from a favorite co-worker back in the day when I actually got up really early and got dressed in pantyhose and high heels.  Side note, I don't actually think I own a pair of pantyhose anymore.  And you should see me walking in high heels!  It's hysterical.  My feet have completely adjusted to wearing only gray converse or ballet flats nearly every waking moment.  I don't even know what to do with heels anymore.

Anyway. 

Here is my version of these yummy bars.  And no. They're not good for you.

Jennifer's coconut bars
1/4 cup butter
1 1/4 cup crushed graham crackers
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (14 oz) bag sweetened coconut flakes
1 bag chocolate chips

Turn your oven on to 325 degrees.
Place 1/4c butter into a 9x13 pan, then place the pan into the warming oven and let the butter melt. 
While that's going on, crush enough graham crackers to make 1/1/4 cups.  (I used s'moreables because they are gluten free.  They taste kind of awful, but if you cover something in enough chocolate it's good. Just saying.)
Pull the pan with the melted butter out of the oven and dump in your crushed grahams.  Mix them well and press them all down into the pan to form a crust. 
Open a can of sweetened condensed milk.  Pour it over the top of the graham cracker crust.
Sprinkle a bag of sweetened coconut flakes over top. (But reserve just a handful)
Sprinkle a bag of chocolate chips over that, evenly.
Take the reserved coconut and sprinkle it over the chocolate chips so it can get all toasty and pretty looking.


(I don't think I've ever said the word "sprinkle" this much in my life.)

Now pop that pan into the oven and bake for about 25 minutes. 

 It makes your kitchen smell all coconut-y.  And yummy.

And this is what my kitchen looks like right this minute.  I actually had to stop in the middle of getting this post up and snap a photo for you.  I'm making enchiladas and egg muffins (the healthy kind) at the same time.  I can't help my multi-tasking self.  

Now I have to scoot because the hoodlums are almost home from school.  What are you up to today?

Finding Help.

I am always blown away by this amazing blog world.  Of course I do realize that there are yucky people out there who leave snarky comments and such, but my experience with that side of blogging has been rare.  In fact, my experiences with people via emailing, commenting, encouraging one another and such, has always been overwhelmingly positive. 

Last week when I un-customized my blog on accident, I panicked.  (I had never reverted to a new template design, back when Blogger was making template changes and therefore, I had never been able to do any customizing for the little appearance-type things such as font, color, and size choices.  I couldn't widen my margins... that sort of thing. Drove me nuts to have a vision in my head but not be able to create it.)  After messing up the entire thing, and frantically texting a few of my buddies, my friend Carissa pointed me to  Pink+Lola.  (And I LOVE the look of Carissa's blog.) Not only are the Pink+Lola blog templates gorgeous, they are also reasonably priced.  She offers all kinds of services and customizations.  (I love her stuff and these photos are two beautiful examples from her shop.) The thing was, I have always designed my own blog header and sidebar buttons... and my cute little VW bus has become my brand, so I didn't really need a template overhaul.  I simply needed help and guidance with some uncooperative tweaking.

The shop owner, Kelly, didn't know me from anybody.  But she graciously offered advice  from the kindness of her heart, and I followed it.

It worked.  Day saved. Yippee!

I've almost got everything on the screen how I see it in my head. I only have two more "tweaks" in progress. One is that "Pin-it" button that appears when you roll your mouse over a photo.  I'm not 100% sure I want it... so I'm still thinking on it.   

Anyway, I don't know if you are looking to make-over your blog, switch something around, or make some customizations but please consider this sweet woman.  She works with Blogger and Word Press. I think you will be so pleased! 

What has your blog experience been?  Has it been positive and encouraging?  Do you have your blog looking just how you want... or are you feeling like the vision you have in your head doesn't match?  Do you use Blogger or Word Press... or something else?  And how do you like it? 

New again. And a winner.

Sometimes I get the itch to change something.

Who am I kidding? This, my friends, is a daily occurrence.

Remember last weekend when we were weeding, mowing, moving bricks around, laying more gravel, removing two huge garden boxes, planting vegetables and flowers and spreading beauty bark?

Yeah.  That was a crazy weekend.  

And remember when I mentioned that I was also getting ready to paint my bike and paint our bathroom cupboards because I can't concentrate unless I am surrounded by fifteen half completed projects?  

Yeah.
 
Well, I have been crushing on all of those vintage looking cruiser-style bike for ages.  And I hated the boring gray color of my bike.  But the thing is this.  My bike is perfectly fine.  It works fine and a new bike for no reason isn't in our budget.  So I did what any normal girl would do. I asked Joe if he would be able to take it apart so I could spray paint it.  He was like, "Duh mom, of course I can, who do you think you're talking to here?"  (Okay, so those weren't his exact words.  But that was the gist of it.) He had pieces of my bike sprawled across the garage floor faster than I could find a wrench.

(And apparently you don't really need wrenches to take bikes apart these days. Who knew?)

I hit the whole thing with primer that I had already had, and two coats of glossy, turquoise paint.  I had been previously storing the bike basket but I hadn't attached it.  Once it was all dry we put the whole bike back together, added the cute little basket, and now it feels like a brand new bike. All for the price of one can of spray paint and way too much painter's tape.  (I am sorry I didn't take any before or in-process photos.  Apparently I was busy with a few other things. Heh, heh.)  The point is this....with a little inexpensive and quick tweaking and the help of a twelve year old boy- I now love my bike.

 (I should never give Adrain the camera.  He's such a goof when he takes photos of me.  He snaps hundreds.  I kid you not.)

The best part of having a big flurry of change... I am going into a weekend with everything done.  DONE.  I can't even remember when that word has been last uttered by me.

(I even hustled and restocked my shop with some more of the Antique blue ball jar flour sack dish towels (found here) that y'all keep buying.) 

And now I can ride my pretty, new-to-me bike, sit in my tidy backyard, roast marshmallows in my fire pit, and enjoy a spruced up bathroom area.  I plan on doing nothing but relaxing for the rest of the weekend.

I'd say that came just in time for Mother's day!

Thank you again to miss Jessica from Jessica's Serenity for the fun giveaway.  The randomly chosen winner of Jessica's triple wrapped bracelet is... #34 Heather. (Email me at lemonademakinmama@comcast.net to claim your prize!)

If you would like to order one of Jessica's gorgeous creations, make sure and visit her Etsy shop, here.  (And don't forget you can still use the coupon code "LEMONADEMAKINMAMA" when you check out, because Jessica is offering 10% off all of your orders until May 17th!)

Flinging through the air.

I was doing some reckless cleaning the other day.  And what I mean by that, is I had a garbage bag in one hand and everything my other hand landed on was going into it.  I do that sometimes.  I'm a clutter hater.

Anyhow, as I was throwing things, I found a pile of old journals.  I'm one of those people that doesn't typically keep them after a few years have gone by.  This one, however, was a keeper.  I recognized the year and I knew that everything poured out onto paper in that journal needed to be saved.

  

 I dropped it onto the counter top and it flipped open near the middle, as books often do.  I took note of the page because the center had been written on, circled, starred, and highlighted.  It was August 30, 2010.  I remember that day.  It was the first day of homeschooling and I knew I was in trouble the first hour of that day.  (That's a whole other story.)

I wrote an entire quote from Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest.  (You know, before I starred, circled and highlighted it.)  It read, "Patience is more than endurance.  A saint's life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer.  God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and he stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says, "I cannot stand anymore."  God does not heed, He goes on stretching til His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly...Faith is the heroic effort of your life; you fling yourself in reckless confidence on God."

I've gotten it wrong more often than I've gotten it right over the past few years, as documented in my roller coaster ride "Adventure Chronicles" label (on my sidebar), but I can tell you one thing.  I've gotten pretty good at that 'flinging myself in reckless confidence on God' part.

Don't you love the visual picture of that?


There is still plenty of time to enter my GIVEAWAY!  Winner will be chosen randomly on Friday!

I'm just pretending to know what I'm doing.

This past weekend, as the sun shone brightly, my family was quietly grieving a sad loss.  Adrain and I kept the kiddos so busy with our yard work/campfire pit project that they wouldn't have time to think much about it.  Before we all dropped in exhaustion on Sunday night, and as the last rays of golden sunshine began sliding over the horizon, we grabbed my cute parents and dragged them down to the riverside for some photos.  I hadn't been able to decide what to give the two most amazing people in my life, who have spent forty years loving only each other.  And then one day it hit me, and I decided that we needed to commemorate their anniversary with some photos.

I feel so comfortable photographing things that don't breathe or move... but live people are another matter.  There was gorgeous (but intimidating) sun flare all over the place and I don't always know what to do with that.  (I want to be Paige or Carissa when I grow up so I can figure that sort of thing out.)  My parents were so cute and fun and my dad's goofy antics had me laughing so hard I couldn't keep the camera still at times. 

I didn't really know what I was doing for the most part, and kept whipping out my Pinterest file to tell them how to pose.  Then we'd laugh and I'd shoot a few more photos.  I was so relieved when they turned out cute!!

Life is like that for me.  Most of the time, I don't have a clue what I'm doing, and I stumble all over the place trying to make sense of it all.  I do this in parenting, relationships that have gone twisted, finances that don't make sense on paper, plans that aren't aligning... that sort of thing.  I stand inside the circle of mess and destruction sometimes and think, "If this works out, it's going to be nothing short of a miracle." And then... miraculously, it works itself out.  A little faith.  A little perseverance.  A little waiting.  And then suddenly it all shifts into place and I sigh in relief and cover that thing with prayers of thanksgiving.

  The verse in my bible reading today, was, (Psalm 37:23-24)  "The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand."  

And then guess what I did?

I dropped off the hoodlums and went for a run.

It was gorgeous and sun-shiney. As I was rounding out the end of mile three, about 200 yards from where my car was parked, I tripped as my toe grazed a chunk of sidewalk that was sticking out.  I stumbled like a drunken sailor for about five steps, my hands reaching out wildly to catch myself, and the two fragmented thoughts in my head at that moment were, "OH dear GOD please don't let me end up with teeth like a hockey player," and "Thank you God that though I may stumble, I will not fall, because You uphold me with Your hand!" 

I'm not kidding.

It's a wild ride inside my brain, folks. 

The point is this.  I don't have to know what I'm doing.  Because God does, and He's there to catch me.  And you.  I don't know about you, but I am so thankful for that.

And Happy Anniversary month to my Mama and Daddy (even though you're actual anniversary isn't for a few weeks.)  You've always been there for me during my many stumbles.

Thank you for showing me Who to turn to when I do. 

Special thank you's to my sidebar sponsors, or as I affectionately call them, 

my LMM family...  for May. 

Deliciously Inspired (who is also hosting a sweet giveaway right now, here.)  Leen the Graphics queen, Lowercase Letters, LaFamille, Pearly Bird designs, 163 Design Company, San Fernando St, The Ironstone Nest, The Rustic Ribbon, Farmgirl Paints, Jeanne Oliver, Between You and Me, and Shades Up and Co.

Things I'm loving... and a GIVEAWAY!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED AND COMMENTS ARE NOW CLOSED.
***The randomly chosen winner of Jessica's triple wrapped bracelet is... #34 Heather. (Email me at lemonademakinmama@comcast.net to claim your prize!)  If you would like to order one of Jessica's gorgeous creations, make sure and visit her Etsy shop, here.  (And don't forget you can still use the coupon code "LEMONADEMAKINMAMA" when you check out, because Jessica is offering 10% off all of your orders until May 17th!)***

 I'm a little bit giddy today, about posting things I love.  Okay in all fairness I'm like that a lot.  But especially today!!  I'm hosting one of my favorite giveaways this week... (and don't you dare scroll down to the bottom yet.)  (grin) I'm loving these heritage blue ball jars that I found lurking in my grocery store.  There was one box left. ONE.  I nabbed it because we can always use more drinking glasses, yes?  Yes!!

 I had a coupon for 200 free photo prints. (LOVE THAT!)  I went back into my archives and realized how many photos I haven't done anything with.  Like our entire Disnelyand Vacation from back in 2010. (Mom fail.) Does anyone else out there completely space it on printing out your photos?  Why is that?! My hoodlums can spend hours looking through old photo albums... so I printed those suckers up and stuffed them into an inexpensive album.  I love that.

Lockets.  I love lockets.  (This one came from Origami Owl)

Because I printed all those photos, I got an indexed print with all of those sweet faces in miniature.  They happen to be just about the perfect size for lockets.  Here's all you'll need:

Scissors
Glue dots

I know.  It's really complicated. 

I didn't have two vertical shots that I loved, but that's okay.  It doesn't have to be perfect to be tucked inside a place where nobody but you is ever really going to look at it.

 See?  Not perfect.  Trim the corners and any printed information...

 Then grab a glue dot. 

Place one into the center.  (And yes I realize you probably didn't need a photograph of this.  What can I say.  I'm a classic overachiever one minute and a lazy person the next.  A girl hates to be too predictable.)

 Press in your photos...

 And voila!  I love Joe's expression.  Classic.

 I love having my hoodlums little faces close to my heart.  

I also love my customers. YOU GUYS!!  I can't promise shipment in time for Mother's day depending on where you live... but I do have another batch of my antique blue ball jar flour sack dishtowels up for grabs here, if you want one. 

And now.  For my most favorite thing.... that I love.  Jessica from Jessica's Serenity is giving away a tripple wrapped bracelet to one of my precious readers.  You can choose which ever one you want from her shop.  Can you believe it?  She is wonderful and she does gorgeous bead work.  I am lucky enough to own two, but this cross absolutely has my heart and these beads are a fantastic glassy-green.  I fell madly in love with it the first minute I saw it. 

 

Here is another example of her work.  I love these coral beads.  I do believe this is my favorite color. 

And to make it even sweeter, Jessica is offering 10% off all of your orders until May 17th if you use the coupon code "LEMONADEMAKINMAMA" when you check out. 

To be entered to win one of Jessica's triple wrapped bracelets... please go to her shop here, and then leave a comment for us letting us know which of her bracelets you love the most!

For extra entries, Pin, Tweet, Facebook, Blog, or Instagram about it and make sure to leave a separate comment letting us know you did that, for each one!


I will announce a winner next Friday!  Now go forth and think about things you love all weekend.